Welcome

Welcome to the POZ/AIDSmeds Community Forums, a round-the-clock discussion area for people with HIV/AIDS, their friends/family/caregivers, and
others concerned about HIV/AIDS. Click on the links below to browse our various forums; scroll down for a glance at the most recent posts; or join in the
conversation yourself by registering on the left side of this page.

Privacy Warning: Please realize that these forums are open to all, and are fully searchable via Google and other search engines. If you are HIV positive
and disclose this in our forums, then it is almost the same thing as telling the whole world (or at least the World Wide Web). If this concerns you, then do not use a
username or avatar that are self-identifying in any way. We do not allow the deletion of anything you post in these forums, so think before you post.

The information shared in these forums, by moderators and members, is designed to complement, not replace, the relationship between an individual and his/her own
physician.

All members of these forums are, by default, not considered to be licensed medical providers. If otherwise, users must clearly define themselves as such.

Forums members must behave at all times with respect and honesty. Posting guidelines, including time-out and banning policies, have been established by the moderators
of these forums. Click here for “Am I Infected?” posting guidelines. Click here for posting guidelines pertaining to all other POZ/AIDSmeds community forums.

We ask all forums members to provide references for health/medical/scientific information they provide, when it is not a personal experience being discussed. Please
provide hyperlinks with full URLs or full citations of published works not available via the Internet. Additionally, all forums members must post information which are
true and correct to their knowledge.

As most of you have seen and experienced first hand, we've been experiencing tremendous difficulties in the Forums as of late. The root cause of the errant pop-ups, Forums layout abnormalities and login problems appears to be malicious PHP and javascript code being uploaded to our server. Though we are taking precautions to secure the breaches, hackers are still getting past our defenses -- and we have reason to believe the malicious code is continually being uploaded in the form of fake image files.

Our initial effort to combat this involved blocking all message-based images from being uploaded to our server (the use of inline HTML-based images is still authorized). We now need to strip the Forums of all uploaded avatars -- with more than 1500 uploaded avatars in the system, we simply can't go through each image file to ferret out malicious code.

All uploaded avatars will be stripped as of 10:30 this morning.

That said, you will still have the option of personalizing your avatar. There are a few options.

3) Either use the "Personalized Picture" option of the "I have my own pic" option. "I will upload my own picture" will no longer be an option.

4) If you choose "I have my own pic," you'll need to provide a URL to an image file of choice posted elsewhere. To do this, post your current (or new) avatar to a photo sharing site -- such as Picasa, Flickr, Photbucket, etc. -- and isolate the URL for that particular photo. Simply copy and paste the URL for the image you'd like to use in the space provided.

It's unfortunate it has come to this -- but hackers are clearly set on ruining the forums for the rest of us.

I ask for your patience and cooperation as we do everything possible to put an end to this problem once and for all.

I appreciate that the switch to inline, URL-based avatars will be a headache for many. Thus, I'm asking for everyone's cooperation and hope that we can all help each other out -- in this thread and via private messaging -- with avatar images.

Before posting a new avatar picture to a photo sharing site, be sure to resize your desired image so that it's 100 X 100 pixels (the default for inline images; SMF might not recognize alternative image dimensions on other websites).

If you don't know how to resize images using photo software program(s) on your computer, use an online image cropping service (e.g., shrinkpictures.com).

Simply upload the image you'd like to use and resize to 100 pixels.

On the results page, you'll be provided with a URL containing the cropped image. Copy and paste the provided URL into a new window, then download the image and republish it your favorite photo sharing site. Use the URL for the image on the photo sharing site to update your AIDSmeds Forums profile.

Another question...does this have anything to do with the recent, seeming to be site-related spam e-mails I'm receiving? Not knowing what form the hacking takes and if they're accessing personal e-mail addresses I've gotten a half dozen within the last two weeks which then link to Canadian drug sources. Thanks much.

And, please, why would hackers be interested in seeding this havoc on this Forum?

for the same reason any virus/spam happens - because some fool out there will respond and send money. spamming/hacking takes next to no effort on the other end and if just one idiot responds that's money somebody didn't even have to work for.

And, please, why would hackers be interested in seeding this havoc on this Forum?

As Leatherman points out, this isn't so much about maliciously sabotaging the Forums as it is about hackers taking advantage of the Forums' high traffic to promote the sale, through clandestine methods, of erectile dysfunction drugs and controlled substances from off shore distributors. Needless o say, these ads are not authorized by us.

The moderators are continuously blocking new accounts from tried and true spammers. Some, however, really want to play hardball and attempt to insert malicious code onto our server to generate unauthorized popups. Though their efforts usually fail, they do damage in the process.

Another question...does this have anything to do with the recent, seeming to be site-related spam e-mails I'm receiving? Not knowing what form the hacking takes and if they're accessing personal e-mail addresses I've gotten a half dozen within the last two weeks which then link to Canadian drug sources. Thanks much.

We *do not* believe that the e-mail-related spam being received by some members of the Forums and POZ Personals is related to the website hacks we've been experiencing as of late. There's been an upswing in Malware-generated e-mail hacks affecting a variety of e-mail networks, not just those related to POZ or AIDSmeds. We have absolutely no reason to believe that anyone's Forums account has been compromised.

We've implemented some important additional security precautions this weekend. Hopefully, we're now one step ahead of the hack attempts -- and we're going to be rolling out some additional precautions in coming weeks. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon problem among online community forums; fortunately, we continue to learn from the experiences of others in this regard.

Keep your antiviral software up to date and operating at all times. And don't click on any questionable links, or open questionable attachments, included in e-mails -- no matter who is sending them. When in doubt, send an e-mail to the sender asking for clarification.

Well butter my butt and call me biscuit . . . I figured out how to do it!

Seems you can teach an old dog new tricks.

HUGS,

Mark

I use Photobucket.com and it works great. Very easy. It even allows me to post pix that poz.com said were too large before using the old way. However, when I try cropping pix of me, it sometimes makes my face look funny.

http://[img]http//i123.photobucket.com/albums/o305/Capricorn38/Myhusband007.jpg[/IMG]it shouldn't have that "http://" in front of the IMG tag,and after the IMG tag it should read "http://" (the colon is missing)

"I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else."

I must be doing something wrong, my photo is not showing up...This morning I created a page with Picasa, edited the photo to the correct size and published.I took the URL address and put it in the appropriate blank in my profile and hit save changes.Nothing is showing up as a photo. Do I need to be drinking stronger coffee?Any help would be great.

I must be doing something wrong, my photo is not showing up...This morning I created a page with Picasa, edited the photo to the correct size and published.I took the URL address and put it in the appropriate blank in my profile and hit save changes.Nothing is showing up as a photo. Do I need to be drinking stronger coffee?Any help would be great.

Can I get some tecno help? I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I absolutely hate the fuzzy picture I have. I shared it to Photobucket and sized it accordingly. The image is perfectly clear on photobucket but shows up fuzzy here. With the fuzzy pic, I look like I have man boobs. Thanks guys! and gals! (oops)

you have resized your pix entirely too small. the dimensions of the photobucket pix are 50x65 which is about half the size for this site. So the software here is stretching the picture and thus the man-boobs. for the best resolution, take your original pix resize/crop it to 100x100, and upload that one to photobucket to use - and no more blurry pix.

"...health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for." Kofi Annan

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man. Mignon McLaughlin

HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character. Randy Shilts

"When people who are not ready jump in, things can go horribly wrong. For most of us, there is always time to take a deep breath, consider one's options and make a careful, sound decision based on clinical fact, not emotion."MtD

"...health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for." Kofi Annan

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man. Mignon McLaughlin

HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character. Randy Shilts

Hey Ann, Thanks for asking. I am doing fantastically, Really. Viral undetectable, CD4 545 and rising. (me hopes), a bit of high cholestrol, but managebale. Life very good.

I am more of a lurker then poster these days...

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Cruise on down the High Way

"When people who are not ready jump in, things can go horribly wrong. For most of us, there is always time to take a deep breath, consider one's options and make a careful, sound decision based on clinical fact, not emotion."MtD

I may be terrible in RL with names and faces; but online, I always think of everyone by their avatars/profile pix. So I'm always happy to help someone get their profile pix working. That way I have some sort of an image to match with a person to match with their words.

I may be terrible in RL with names and faces; but online, I always think of everyone by their avatars/profile pix. So I'm always happy to help someone get their profile pix working. That way I have some sort of an image to match with a person to match with their words.

A humble servants work is never done!

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It is not the arrival that matters. It is the journey along the way. -- Michel Montaigne

I was very proud of myself & grateful to leatherman because I wouldn't have figured it out on my own.

Mikie I figured all this out, by following the way you said to do it, in the thread, @ 1st I was a little confused w/ the whole [IMG] thingy, but low and behold it really wasn't that hard, at least the way you explained it worked THANKS SO MUCH maybe this should be a sticky so others can learn how to do this...

« Last Edit: March 11, 2011, 01:45:10 PM by denb45 »

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"it's so nice to be insane, cause no-one ask you to explain" Helen Reddy cc 1974

"...health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for." Kofi Annan

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man. Mignon McLaughlin

HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character. Randy Shilts

the biggest hassle with any pix here, be it avatar of in a post, is not being able to upload it here anymore because of damn hackers. Argh! but once you setup up a pix acct somewhere, it's not too complicated - and well worth the hassle to not have to deal with hackers getting in.

so first you'll need to open up another window to set up an acct at http://photobucket.com or just to open up your photobucket acct.

then to post a pix or avatar here follow these instructions:step 1 go to photobucket, upload a pix, then click "save and continue to my album"

step2hover over the image you want to use until the options menu appears. click in the box where it says "DIRECT LINK" and that will automagically copy the link/url to that pix

To Change your Avatar:Click USER above your current pictureunder MODIFY PROFILE, click "Forum Profile Information"right click, and paste into the text box at "I have my own pic"Click CHANGE PROFILE at the bottom.Bingo! all done

Don't forget: best size is 100X100

here's the instructions for adding a pix into a poststep 3come back to aidsmeds and write a post or PMclick the IMAGE button (above the 3rd smiley in the toolbar - it looks like this --> )

your post should have IMG tags in it now. (it's hard to type those here for a demo cause it thinks i'm putting in a picture; but it would show like this:

You can also test whether or not your attempt worked by going back to the "summary" portion of your profile after twiddling with the dials in the settings department. Your avatar is always shown in that portion of your profile doings.

"...health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for." Kofi Annan

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man. Mignon McLaughlin

HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character. Randy Shilts

I am curious... Last year my computer crashed, losing all photos. Over the years, I have posted many photos so, if I took the time to locate the threads where I have photos, would I be able to save those images to my new computer? Have the best dayMichael